Some Black people took this as their cue to begin forming infantry units of their own. Navy, on the other hand, was more progressive: There, African Americans had been serving as shipboard firemen, stewards, coal heavers and even boat pilots since 1861. WATCH America's Black Warriors on HISTORY Vault A “White Man’s War”?īlack soldiers had fought in the Revolutionary War and-unofficially-in the War of 1812, but state militias had excluded African Americans since 1792.
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation: “All persons held as slaves within any States…in rebellion against the United States,” it declared, “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” (The more than 1 million enslaved people in the loyal border states and in the Union-occupied parts of Louisiana and Virginia were not affected by this proclamation.) It also declared that “such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States.” For the first time, Black soldiers could fight for the U.S.
